Going South
by bethemoon
Summary: Meta on Renesmee, disguised as fic. PG-13, violence, no pairings, post-BD. She can take care of herself. Spiritual as genre for lack of a better one like, character examination, or something .


**Title**: Going South**  
Characters/Pairings**: Renesmee Cullen**  
Rating**: PG-13**  
Warnings**: Violence, death.**  
When**: After Breaking Dawn.**  
Summary**: When she looks in the mirror, her eyes are still brown. She smiles.**  
Disclaimer**: Not mine, thank heavens.**  
Author's Note**: Look, I'm not a fan of Twilight, so this can't actually be called fanfiction, I think. Um. It's more meta on Renesmee, because my first thought on reading BD was "WTF EWWW" and my second thought was "wow, Renesmee is going to be so screwed up." So yeah. Meta. Not fanfic. Also, there was going to be more, but I liked the last sentence too much as an ending. Someday there might be a companion piece to this. The title comes from the last line and also from the phrase 'to go south' which means something like 'to get messed up.'

*

The day of her third birthday, she looks like she is eight years old. She can recite soliloquies, passages of famous literature, and due to books Grandfather Carlisle has in his study, the entire Anglican services.

*

By the time she turns four, what had been mere parrot-like repetition becomes a thirst for real knowledge, and she doesn't recite anymore, just reads as much as she can, taking notes and ordering textbooks offline.

*

One morning soon after she turns five, she doesn't get out of bed, just lies there with her fingers against her throat and listens to her pulse beat fast as she grows.

She lies there for a month, her family leaving her alone on Edward's request, and begins to comprehend eternity.

She is not quite so eager about growing after that.

*

On her sixth birthday she looks sixteen and feels like she's three. Her clothes are all picked out for her, fancy and perfect, her meals prepared, anything she wants given to her, and she feels smothered.

So she drives into town in her mother's old truck and buys second hand jeans and t-shirts and a pack of red hair dye, which she goes to Charlie's place to use.

"Looks good, kid," he says when she comes down the stairs.

She wants to say thank-you, so she goes fishing with him, bundled up in a windbreaker and one of Charlie's old plaid shirts with her newly red hair whipping in her face. He shakes his head when she offers the windbreaker and shirt back, so she keeps them. The whole truck smells like sunshine and water as she drives.

When she gets home, her mother just shakes her head and looks resigned, and suddenly the whole effort feels like a waste.

"Fish for dinner?" she says into the silence, holding up her catch.

*

"I want to go to Harvard," she tells them.

"Plenty of time for that." Her mother looks worried.

"Next year."

*

She can take care of herself.

*

"My hair's growing too fast," she tells Charlie, holding up a box of bright red hair dye.

"Don't stain the sink," he says, and then as she goes up the stairs, "I'm going fishing tomorrow. Want to come?"

"Yeah.," she says, and smiles at him.

*

She makes up a transcript, carefully writing down the grades she got on subjects she taught herself, and when J. J. asks her what name to put on the papers she says, "Mary Blake," without any hesitation.

*

She falls in love with Harvard the moment she steps on campus, completely alone. Her family has moved on from Forks, but she said no every time they suggested coming here. Jake had been the most insistent, but she is not in love with him, and besides, Mary Blake does not have a Destiny, or a promise bracelet, or anything binding her to things in the dark but the cell phone in her bag.

She leaves it there and buys a new one - 'hi, this is Mary, leave a message' she says clearly - and when girls and boys ask for her number it is this one she gives out.

*

"She'll come back," Esme had said confidently. "We're her family."

Mary isn't so sure.

*

At night she walks alone, searching for danger. Her third night, she finds a man hitting a girl.

She slits his throat with her fingernails and drinks him dry.

When she looks in the mirror, her eyes are still brown. She smiles.

*

"I'm going to see the world," she tells her mother, and hangs up before she can hear any more than a faint "Nessie, what?" She is not Renesmee Cullen anymore.

*

The bus pulls in.

*

She goes south.


End file.
